As one of the 12 erring advisors... I'm going to throw this bit in. In the States, my nearest Scots Gaelic study group was a 9 hour drive away (at an average of 70 mph...) One problem I saw with the Scots Gaelic advocates, including the US chapter of ACG, was they spent a LOT of time defining what they were NOT - not defining what they were.

Phillipa's point above is terribly relevant, regarding the proportion of population that spoke Gaelic in the first place.

When I began playing music in Michigan, there was one other band that played regularly. They played fairly strict traditional, and frankly did not play much. We tried to mix traditional tunes with the pub-rubbish beer-drinking sing-along stuff - and even THAT was radical! "Why does that song have the whisky in the jar?" I actually got asked that question once. How do you answer that? My favorite was being asked if I saw any leprechauns when I lived in Ireland... I said only after drinking my pay from playing in the bar.

It took nearly 10 years for the general populace here to accept that Scottish music and Irish music could be played by the same band. And it took nearly that long to show that there was much more to either than "rebel" or "Jacobite" songs. That there are scores of incredible songs that have nothing to do with "the cause" - whatever that cause may be.

I'm still working on getting people to realize that because an Irish band performed a song, it is not automatically Irish. My favorite was someone asking me if I knew the Irish song "The Drummerboy of Shiloh" and if I knew the story behind it. When I said "Yes, I knew the song. It is not Irish at all, it dates from the American civil war." They got upset - because Scartlaglen did it on a CD!

I'm not opposed to sneaking in the odd song in Gaelic, Irish or Scots Gaelic, I just get tired of explaining afterward that it is not a song in gibberish that has a good beat to it.

My goal is to get people interested in the real deal, not just kilts and bagpipes and shamrocks and the like - but to try and point them to where they can expand their mind.

Rant bit set to off.

Cheers -

Pete